Hey, I am a 23 year old successful male. But I find my self angry all the time.
It feels like I am angry at the world for no reason. Any small thing sets me off, esspecialy driving, and the ones closest to me. When I am not angry I am either deppressed or full of anziety. I dont know why, my doctor tells me I am stressed out from work, but I dont feel that.
I haved tried the counting to 10 and the repression techniques but it just makes it worse or last longer.. I am affraid that it will end up costing me my loved ones and freinds. What should I do or try?
Thanks.

ABABABAJK

03-16-2008 05:17 PM

Re: Searching for help..

Anger comes from a lack of control. All feelings of anger people get
boil down to feeling like or know that they don't have control of a
situation. Sometimes people get angry because they don't understand
why a situation is happening or why someone is doing something, but
this too boils down to wanting to change a situation but not
understanding it, thus not being able to control it. I will go into
more detail about that, just keep it in mind.

So as I said, Anger comes from a feeling of not having control. Here are
some examples.

* You trip on a rock after a bad day, and get angry and start
yelling, either at the rock, or God, or just plain everything.

--You do not have the ability to go back in time and make the
unpleasant experience of tripping on the rock not happen. Nor do you
have control (or feel you have control) over the bad day you had.

* You are speeding way over the speed limit, and you get angry
when you get pulled over.

--You may try to justify your anger, saying that cops are stupid, or
you had to go fast for whatever reason, and maybe your anger is
justified. But the anger comes from not having control over getting
pulled over, having to wait, getting a ticket, and maybe being
embarrassed, and whatever else is unpleasant that you dont have
control over.

* Some random person you don't know says you are ugly and fat and
whatever else.

--Maybe you can justify your anger because the person was mean. But
you are actually angry because well a number of possible reasons that
lead back to a feeling of not control. Maybe deep inside you think you
are everything they said, if you got angry in that case it might be
because you feel like you are insecure about your looks and don't have
control over how you look (or not enough) Or maybe you are not
insecure, and the random person was a ten year old. Most people
wouldn't get mad, but suppose you did. Maybe you are mad that the kids
parents didn't raise him better, or if its not a kid, that they would
say something so mean (even if you know its not true) to a stranger.
Either way,you want them to be nicer but cant control them or their
parents or how they think, or their past to make them nicer.

* A friend insults you.

-- You don't believe the insult, but maybe you don't understand why
they said it. as I said in the beginning, "Sometimes people get angry
because they don't understand why a situation is happening or why
someone is doing something, but this too boils down to wanting to
change a situation but not understanding it, thus not being able to
control it."In this case, you probably don't want to "control" what
your friend thinks in the way we normally think of the word control.
But you might be hurt that they would say something. Or you don't
understand why they said it. In the end you probably want your friend
to agree with you on their own, and you don't want to force them to
agree, you want them to do it on their own free will. Obviously you
don't have a lot of control over that and it can be frustrating.

OK, so up until now I've just tried to show that one way to look at
anger is that it comes a from a loss of control. If I haven't
convinced you of that, or you don't think the concept makes sense,
don't read on because you wont get what I'm trying to say. Email me
with why you think it doesn't come from a lack of control.

When you get angry, you are actually getting frustrated with yourself,
for not being able to control whatever it is you want to control.
First, I want to say that By "control" I don't mean everyone is a
"control freak" in the way we normally think of, but rather people
naturally have a desire for the world world to work in a way that is
pleasant to them. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, its just part
of humans. We want to world to be nice to us.

Generally we think of other things making us angry. The rock was in
our way, thus causing us to be angered. The person shot our dog, rear
ended us, shot a spit wad at us, said we smell like used toilet paper,
or fired us from our job. Maybe we are mad because we were going to go
play soccer but it starts raining, or we are mad because a flood came
and destroyed our house and killed everyone in our family.

Now, I'm not saying its stupid to get angry, life sometimes sucks, and
humans deal with our problems and stress by expressing out emotions.
Getting angry at the rock you just tripped on is a natural mechanism
humans have to relieve stress.

So perhaps you are thinking.. "Thats stupid, I'm not frustrated at
myself, it was that guy who cut me off that I'm mad at." But what you
actually mean is that you are projecting your frustration onto the
most logical thing you can think of to project it onto: the guy who
cut you off". You are projecting that frustration onto him in the form
of anger, or expressing it to him as anger. This is how humans
naturally relieve their stress. It works pretty good too. Its
incredibly important not to hold in your emotions, you'll mess
yourself up (I did). But there are different ways of expressing your
frustration.

First id like to give an example to help show you that you are in fact
frustrated with your general inability to stop something from
happening, or make something happen.

Its true that people do stupid things and that could make us angry.
But I can basically prove thats not why you get angry. Suppose someone
hits you and you get angry.

Question #1 Are you mad because that person tried to hit you, and they
shouldn't?

Question #2 Or are you mad because you didn't have control over the
uncomfortable experience of getting punched.

Well lets slightly alter the scenario, so the first question is still
true, but the second isn't. Supposed the person tries to hit you but
misses. Are you still angry? In most cases you wouldn't be and if you
are its because of a different reason. For example, if your close
friend is trying to hit you, you might be frustrated because you
thought they wouldn't want to hurt you. Now you might say "SEE! there,
In that scenario I got mad because my friend tried to hurt me!" But if
you look deeper its because your friend tried to hurt you, you don't
want him or her to hurt you, or want to hurt you, so you are angry
either because you cant stop them from wanting to hurt you, or you
don't understand why they would want to, and thus cant stop them from
wanting you, or bother of those reasons, or some other. The
possibilities are endless but as far as I can tell it comes down to
feeling helpless to stop an event or thing from occurring, be it an
emotion, a physical pain or anything else.

If that does not work to help you understand then imagine everything
that you've ever gotten angry at. Some things you get mad at are
inanimate, or not alive. They don't think, and don't have morals or a
conscience. Such as if you trip on a rock or their is a flood that
kills your family. You can get just as mad at those things as you do
people.

This next example might confuse you... Pretend that everyone besides
you is actually a very complex android (smart robot), that is
programmed to react to you in exactly the way that they do. Every time
someone cuts you off, or dumps you or anything else, they are just
following a programming course that determines their every move. Its
not logical for you to get mad at them and yet you do.

That's how it is when we get mad when a friend or family member dies,
or we trip and fall down or we get cancer. It doesn't matter if the
thing that causes our self frustration is a person who should know
better, or a rock sitting on the ground. We give zillions of reasons
for each different scenario, but it actually just oils down to the
fact that we cant change it. If we had the ability to stop whatever
bad thing happened from occurring, we wouldn't be angry.

Recently I saw a movie I called "The Invasion". Aliens invaded Earth,
taking over the bodies of humans, once they took over the body, they
showed no emotions. Soon almost everyone on earth was an alien. If the
humans
wanted to stay undetected, they had to show no emotion. People showed
emotion, even though it had no positive side for them. In most natural
situations, emotions are very useful to us. In our modern "civilized"
society however, the rules change. Situations where we get angry or
stressed are no longer because a giant animal is about to attack us,
or our life is in danger in some other form. Instead its because we
lose our job or someone insults us. In our modern society showing our
emotions, while natural, and in many ways healthy, is not necessarily
helpful, at least if we express them unchecked. I think "The Invasion"
Is a great, although far fetched example of how people often express
emotions even if it isn't in their best interest.

- Also, the human brain has a gland that produces chemicals which make
you feel various emotions when they are released into your blood
stream. This is why people literally can physically "feel" emotions
rushing through their body.. because it really is rushing through your
body. You can't force yourself not to feel anger, but you can choose
your actions. The Buddhists say don't try to ignore your emotions, and
don't let them control you, instead, observe them, feel them, but then
choose your actions instead of letting your anger chose your actions
and response. You can observe the feeling of anger and the chemicals
rushing through your body and note to yourself "I am angry" but then
note "and I have an endless number of ways to respond to this problem,
and don't have to let my anger choose for me".

Personal note - it seems like you have some specific causes in you life or your past you may need to spend some time resolving.

Sannah

03-17-2008 08:00 AM

Re: Searching for help..

Hi Diamond, I would suggest therapy to work on the anxiety and depression.